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Wintry Winter Storm January 6th-10th #2

I think the cold air is STILL trying to get over the mnts and there is downsloping. A place like Cartersville that doesn't get downsloping from the mnts is only 24 up from their low of 20. I dropped to 20.9, but even with snowcover I'm up to 27.8 now, which is my forecast high. Tallulah Falls in North Habersham is already 35.3 up from 23.1.
 
NorthGAWinterWx said:
I think another reason why we didn't see much snow is because the low was a surface low. We need a ULL that can produce it's own cold air while having reinforcing cold air at the surface. I noticed that when the precipitation was gone, that's when the temperatures really started to fall. I had a low of 23 degrees this AM. During most of the event, I was just sitting above freezing.

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 Are you saying an upper low in general is needed to give much SN or that just in this case one was needed? If you're saying that it is needed in general, I'd disagree based on most major ATL snows not having a closed upper low. 3/1/2009 bowling ball was actually a fairly rare exception going back as far as upper air charts are available. Or are you saying as opposed to in general that in this case it was needed? 
 I say that the main thing that made it more difficult was the lack of already established cold enough air that far south. I think we agree on that.
 
GaWx said:
NorthGAWinterWx said:
I think another reason why we didn't see much snow is because the low was a surface low. We need a ULL that can produce it's own cold air while having reinforcing cold air at the surface. I noticed that when the precipitation was gone, that's when the temperatures really started to fall. I had a low of 23 degrees this AM. During most of the event, I was just sitting above freezing.

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 Are you saying an upper low in general is needed to give much SN or that just in this case one was needed? If you're saying that it is needed in general, I'd disagree based on most major ATL snows not having a closed upper low. 3/1/2009 bowling ball was actually a fairly rare exception going back as far as upper air charts are available. Or are you saying as opposed to in general that in this case it was needed? 
 I say that the main thing that made it more difficult was the lack of already established cold enough air that far south. I think we agree on that.
With the low coming further north and west, that brought up WAA. With an ULL you wouldn't have that because ULLs produce their own cold air that sinks down through the layers of MBs.

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NorthGAWinterWx said:
GaWx said:
NorthGAWinterWx said:
I think another reason why we didn't see much snow is because the low was a surface low. We need a ULL that can produce it's own cold air while having reinforcing cold air at the surface. I noticed that when the precipitation was gone, that's when the temperatures really started to fall. I had a low of 23 degrees this AM. During most of the event, I was just sitting above freezing.

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 Are you saying an upper low in general is needed to give much SN or that just in this case one was needed? If you're saying that it is needed in general, I'd disagree based on most major ATL snows not having a closed upper low. 3/1/2009 bowling ball was actually a fairly rare exception going back as far as upper air charts are available. Or are you saying as opposed to in general that in this case it was needed? 
 I say that the main thing that made it more difficult was the lack of already established cold enough air that far south. I think we agree on that.
With the low coming further north and west, that brought up WAA. With an ULL you wouldn't have that because ULLs produce their own cold air that sinks down through the layers of MBs.

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 I understand for this case since there was no established cold air in advance but an upper low is not usually needed based on looking back at upper charts back into the 1950's. That's what I was addressing. However, many of those storms had the cold air already established.
 
I'll be looking out for area's that still have snow on the ground. You know what they say, snow on the ground for 3 days...that means another winter event will be near. This is true cause I've seen it happen. I'm even surprised that we even got a winter event this early in the season. There's definitely going to be more....oh wait...lets not jinx it lol (seriously though)

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23.4, sunny, lots of snow and ice around still. Just went for a drive..lots of hills and roads still covered especially where sun not hitting. Sadly, in these hills up here the trees cover more road then the sun can hit =\


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NorthGAWinterWx said:
I'll be looking out for area's that still have snow on the ground. You know what they say, snow on the ground for 3 days...that means another winter event will be near. This is true cause I've seen it happen. I'm even surprised that we even got a winter event this early in the season. There's definitely going to be more....oh wait...lets not jinx it lol (seriously though)

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I don't think it gets above freezing until Monday Afternooon late. NWS has 26 here today and 30 tomorrow and 35 Monday.


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Last few flurries winding down...getting some patches of blue sky.

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You can really tell where the snow fell. High resolution satellite image from today.
g13.2017007.2015_CLT_vis.jpg
 
Sorry It did not work out for some of yall. The NAM did very well with this one on my end with the first round. It and the RGEM were the only ones showing me getting in on the snow. I was looking at a dusting at best with most models. The 12k and 4k both had the northern band of snow giving me an inch. We ended up with a solid 2 inches. I would say 80% of the state ended up with 1 to 5 inches. It was a crisp 6 degrees this morning with -5 wind chill.
 
My final storm summary, including how it compares to history/climo:

 The Atlanta area received about 0.50" of rainfall, most of which was ZR. This was vs the GFS' ~1.00" of qpf. The Friday 12Z GFS even had a whopping 1.25"!! I think that one reason it verified much lower than the GFS qpf was that the winds were mainly from the NW (probably closer to NNW) during it, which is typically a snow direction rather than a ZR or sleet direction and which typically is not as wet in Atlanta as the NE or E winds of a wedge.

Atlanta getting as much as 0.50" of ZR with winds from the NNW (no wedge!) was highly unusual. I'm not sure I'll be able to find another case like this going at least back to when prevailing wind data was readily available (around 1940). I already know that I can't find even a single 0.75"+ ZR or even a major sleet that didn't have winds mainly from the east! That's 21 storms since 1940!! Can you imagine all 21 having mainly E winds?!?

I was surprised more of that wasn't sleet as the GFS had repeatedly predicted 925 mb temp.'s of -2C to -3C! Actually, hardly any of it was sleet there! I don't know what the 925's turned out to be. That may very well remain a mystery.

Had it been mostly wet snow, they could have had 4-5".

Another interesting thing about the places in the SE that got a major snow was that it happened with a -PNA, +NAO, and a +AO. It happening with a significant ZR at Atlanta may not have been so surprising but perhaps it was surprising that Greenville (SC), Charlotte and Greensboro all got a major snow with this combo. However, I have often emphasized that major NC snowstorm history since 1950 (when daily NAO/AO data starts) doesn't even come close to requiring a -NAO or -AO as a number of notable NC snowstorms did NOT have either or even both. OTOH, perhaps the lack of either made it difficult to get the central Florida crossover that GFS runs had had just within a couple of days of the storm. Had it crossed central FL instead of N FL, Atlanta probably would have had the major snow that the GFS had been predicting.

One more piece of climo: neutral negative ENSO heavily favors the chance for major ZR or major sleet over major snow at Atlanta! During neutral negative ENSO, Atlanta has had a whopping 18 of either major ZR or major sleet vs only 4 of major snow since the late 1800's! So, regarding ENSO, Atlanta getting significant ZR rather than snow actually fit better with their climo.

In summary, this was an interesting storm for me in a number of ways when analyzing how it compares to past SE winter storms.
 
I've directed the majority of my attention of late towards my AMS project in Seattle this January so I haven't been on here as much of late, as many of you are probably aware, but this was definitely an interesting storm for a multitude of reasons, and all the canonical NW trend, isentropic upglide, and over performing warm nose short-medium range tendencies were all synergistically at play. Overall, this storm was probably one of the biggest busts for me here in Raleigh. I expected at a very minimum a few inches of snow & sleet, and most likely thought we'd see 4-8" of snow/sleet, instead we wasted so much of the QPF on rain early on, received less QPF than forecast, and aside from that, watching the rain-snow line get to within 5 miles of my location in Wake County only to stop and turn back towards the NW during the height of the event was extremely heart wrenching... The heaviest precipitation here came in the form of freezing rain/rain, of course it was too warm (31-32F) and coming down too heavy to really accumulate on anything except on some very well exposed, elevated surfaces, and limited the amount of CAA here. Then when we finally started to cool down somewhat, we changed over to heavy sleet with the rain-snow line once again mere miles to my northwest over Durham-Butner... I guess the one positive was how impressive the backend of the storm was here... We didn't change over to snow until mid-late morning (~930 AM), but it snowed for about 5 hours straight with sustained winds of 15-20 mph and occasional gusts up to 30 mph, with temperatures in the lower 20s... Perfect recipe for a quick accumulation of fluff with ratios ~ 15-20:1... I also can't complain that temperatures here are dropping into the single digits and my first day of classes is cancelled tomorrow, ironically all on my 21st birthday.
 
Something that was extremely odd about this storm here in East TN was that, even with heavier returns showing over the mountains here, the difference in total accumulation between 800' and 5000' was very minimal...roughly about an inch difference. Leads me to be believe that somewhere betwee the 850 and 700 mb levels, there was an extremely dry nose that the models didn't detect. I live at the base of the Cherohala Skyway and here I received 4" (basically what was modeled), but on the Skyway above 5000' the total was around 5" (way below the 10" being modeled).

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School closed again today. Very rare to see a major snow storm followed by 90+ hours of below freezing temps. My side road is still in rough shape but main roads are dry. Very little has melted off the rooftops.

Some major ice cycles today around the house are killing the shrubs from the sheer weight.


 
Ended up with almost 2-1/2 inches and still had snow on half of my yard (totally shaded area) Tuesday morning before it melted away. Monday night I had one of the best times of my life sledding down the roads near my house because they were still iced and snow covered!
 
I spun a bit in the ice/snow this morning in my driveway. Schools are on a Limited bus route this afternoon with a forecast high of 62.

If they call for limited bus routes tomorrow with a high in the low 70s I think that will go down in the record books.
 
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